A Bitter Field (24 page)

Sinclair was thinking of his wigging from the PM again; as well as scarcely concealed desperation to avoid a war, he was now, it seemed, talking of going to Germany to meet Hitler face to face; it did not bode well.

‘I would not put it past him, and besides, he must not find out. You can travel by train tomorrow, I hope, from Paris and that will take you directly to Eger.’

‘Of course. But, sir, there must be more to this than meets the eye. McKevitt seems to be out of control.’

‘The problem is he’s not under my control at present, but out of that entirely he is not.’

Peter waited for him to expand on that, but he waited in vain.

Both he and his boss would have been even more alarmed had either been aware that, as they were talking, McKevitt was on the embassy secure line to Sir Thomas Inskip confirming that there was an operation taking place in Czechoslovakia the nature of which he was unaware and,
ipso facto
, so was the Government.

‘What do you suspect?’ asked a surprised Minister of the Crown, who hardly expected a call from such a location.

‘I am still in the dark about that, sir, but there is no question that it is dangerous and possibly downright illegal.’

‘And you have gone to Czechoslovakia to pursue this?’

‘I have,’ McKevitt lied – he was not going to admit he had been sent. ‘Worse, Sir Hugh Sinclair has decided to shut down the station, an idea he says he discussed with the PM to avoid anything happening to exacerbate tensions.’

‘That, if I may say so, McKevitt, does not square with what you have just been telling me.’

‘No, he’s playing some deep game all right. What I need to kill it off is the authority to override Sir Hugh, and only Mr Chamberlain can grant that.’

Accustomed to giving advice to clients as a top-flight lawyer, Inskip knew that would never be forthcoming because it had no validity unless it was in writing, and he doubted Chamberlain was fool enough to even contemplate such an instruction.

He also knew that anything he said on this telephone was strictly between him and the caller, while it seemed to him important that McKevitt should proceed; why should he not take the reins and act on his own initiative?

‘I can try to get that for you, but it would take time. Do we have time?’

‘I would say it would be tempting providence to think we have.’

Code
, Inskip thought,
for you have no idea of that either
. ‘It may be you have to act on your own until I can get the PM’s ear and he’s away on a fishing holiday.’

‘That exposes me, sir, and I may have to act in a manner that could be seen as prejudicial.’

‘If you deem it necessary then you must do so, and you know I
will back you, McKevitt, if there’s an enquiry.’

‘Do I have permission to keep you informed?’

‘A splendid idea, and I will liaise with the PM about the matter. In fact I will send him a message this very hour.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Phone down, Sir Thomas sat and pondered, reverting to his original conclusion that no such written instruction would come from Neville Chamberlain even if he knew what McKevitt was up to and approved. This was a situation in which he could act as a conduit, and if it proved to have merit he would gain credit; if it was pie in the sky, and it very well could be that, then he could discount all knowledge of it.

As to sending a message to the PM, the poor man was on a
well-earned
holiday, peacefully fishing; it would not be the done thing to impinge on that. Besides, he had plenty on his desk as the Minister for Defence Procurement, not least the latest costings for the new fighter just introduced to RAF service.

The price of building these planes was going up to over twelve thousand pounds per item, and though the people who flew the Spitfire claimed it was a wonder-plane, there was no evidence that it would match whatever other nations were producing, not least the Germans. It could, in aerial combat, turn out to be a dud.

‘As long as you don’t blame me if it’s not,’ he said to himself.

When the pair came back to the hotel from their spin the Ice Maiden was waiting for them, and judging by the look she gave Corrie, it was all her fault that they had lost their followers.

‘That was very wrong of you to run away from those we have given the task of protecting you, Frau Littleton.’

‘We don’t need protection, surely,’ Cal replied, ‘and we did want to see some of the country.’

‘The Czech army is out there and has been known to shoot anyone who they think is spying on their defence works.’

The temptation to say “That must include half the Sudetenland population” had to be suppressed. Then, as she had done so many times before, she smiled at Cal and turned her body just enough to exclude the other woman.

‘But you are back, Herr Barrowman, and safe and that is all that matters.’

That changed when Cal got a peck on the cheek from Corrie; the smile was gone in an instant, before she added with sweet cruelty, ‘And we had such a lovely drive, Fräulein.’

M
ajor Gibby Gibson was well aware he was dithering; should he send another signal to London or not? Effectively he had been relieved of his job by Noel McKevitt, so in essence he had no authority to do anything at all and in between the worries he had there was the requirement to make arrangements to disperse the men under his command.

With the chaps from neighbouring stations it was easy, they had travelled light – pack your kit and take a train to Warsaw and Bucharest. With him and his assistant they would be giving up rented apartments, paying off people like cleaners, saying goodbye to long-standing friends, settling bills for mundane things like gas and electricity, and in his much younger 2IC’s case disentangling himself from a rather torrid love affair.

‘I think you should see this, sir,’ said Tommy the cipher clerk, bursting into Gibson’s office. ‘It’s a flash from London.’

Gibson was out of his chair before he had finished reading it, calling out for the Royal Marines he had stationed in Prague as legation guards to find Noel McKevitt and if necessary restrain him, only to receive the news that the man had taken a Humber Snipe from the pool and had left half an hour before.

‘Did he indent for a weapon?’ he asked the senior marine, a sergeant who was in charge of such things.

The reply was crisply military and given as if such a thing was an everyday occurrence.

‘Webley revolver, sir, and twenty-four rounds of ammo. Nice to see the gentleman was familiar with the weapon, sir, handled it like an old pro, he did.’

London had to be informed and he needed to know what to do – a message which took time to encode and send. It was only by sheer luck it caught Peter Lanchester, who was leaving the building to hail a cab to Victoria for the boat train. He was hauled back smartish to face a seething Sir Hugh Sinclair.

‘Change of orders, Peter,’ he said, thrusting Gibson’s signal in his hand. ‘McKevitt is to be stopped by whatever means are necessary. Right now Miss Beard is typing a letter relieving him of all duties forthwith pending an enquiry into his conduct.’

‘Can’t we get the Czechs to stop him?’

‘He’s armed and travelling on a UK diplomatic passport – what would you say if you were a local and asked to intercept an armed British official roaring around in a legation car with dip plates?’

‘I would wonder what is going on.’

‘And you would ask for clearance to act?’

Peter nodded; he knew what that meant with someone carrying a gun: permission to shoot, which would entail at the very least the
Czech Foreign Ministry asking the ambassador, who in turn might well cable London for clarification.

‘Exactly, and this would all be taking place in a country where, by official diktat, we are supposed to be playing it soft. Get to Eger, Peter, and tell Jardine to abort whatever he’s involved in and get out of the country.’

‘Regardless of what stage he is at?’

‘Regardless,’ Sir Hugh replied, very forcibly, as the required letter was placed in front of him for signature; rather suddenly his eyes misted over and this took on the appearance of a letter of resignation. ‘Termination, Peter, nothing else will do.’

Peter just had time to send a telegram to the Meran Hotel for Vince to get out and he employed the same tactics of colloquial English, there being no time to code it. It read:
Gaff Blown, Scarper
.

Upstairs Sir Hugh Sinclair was composing another signal telling Major Gibson to stand down and do nothing; the last thing he needed was a bunch of SIS men running around Czecho trying to apprehend one of their own. Keeping that quiet might prove impossible.

Driving out of Prague, Noel McKevitt was excited; given the mundane nature of what he had been doing for many years – the life of an SIS man on station was not one of much adventure and being desk bound was even worse – he was shedding nearly two decades, going back to the days when he and men like Barney Foxton, young then and ruthless, had fought the IRA to keep Ireland under the aegis of the British Crown.

That was the last time he had carried a gun in anger, the same as that which lay beside him on the car bench seat. There was too, at the back of his mind, the knowledge that, while he could rise further
in the service, to a man of his background – grammar school and front-line service in a common or garden regiment – positions like that held by Sir Hugh Sinclair were outside his natural reach; he did not come from the right part of the establishment.

Long-held instincts now crystallised into a powerful spur to what he was doing, for it thus followed, and always would even if he had been reluctant to acknowledge it in the past, that elevation to the kind of position he craved would only come from some bold stroke which would elevate his prospects.

Luck played a major part in advancement, that and birth, for, from what he had observed, ability was not a prerequisite if you went to the right schools and saw service in the Royal Navy or the Brigade of Guards. How many senior positions had he seen filled by eejits who had nothing but one of those as their only qualification?

At the first checkpoint he was waved through without trouble; the boys manning it had been educated to recognise the plates of diplomatic vehicles, with which they were neither allowed to interfere or search, and it would be the same at the ones he had yet to face. McKevitt could look forward to being in Cheb in under four hours, the kind of time that had only been possible before Czech mobilisation.

He had reckoned without the car, which on the open road and being pushed a bit hard – normally it was used in town and on short journeys – revealed a radiator prone to overheating, evidenced by the pall of steam that began to issue from the bonnet at the second checkpoint, forcing him to pull over.

Once the steam had dispersed, one of the soldiers keen to assist him identified the problem as a split hose and a very junior conscript
was sent off to find a garage where a replacement might be located. So frustrated was McKevitt that he wanted to retrieve the Webley from under the seat where he had hidden it and shoot someone.

Up ahead Vince Castellano was having a miserable time; every checkpoint was taking over an hour to get through, the traffic backed up for at least a mile and everyone’s papers being checked. Being foreign, he was pulled over for a more serious questioning every time which further delayed his progress and the nearer he got to his destination the jumpier seemed the soldiers.

It was well into the afternoon that he was obliged to pull over to the side to let past a stream of army lorries, some pulling artillery, and he wondered if the balloon had gone up, the only thing that reassured him the lack of a stream of refugees coming the other way. Then, on what this map told him was the border with the province called Karlovy Vary, he was halted altogether, the only consolation being that everyone else was too.

Peter Lanchester was back on the train at Calais wondering whether his stomach would ever settle down after a most appalling crossing in which he had been tossed around like a cork; would he be able to eat the food he had ordered?

The waves in the English Channel were notorious, made more disturbing by the narrowness of the sea and the way the gap between each rise and fall was so small. The whole thing had been accompanied by the sound of breaking glass and crashing crockery as the things normally used to feed and water people – no one was eating or drinking – were chucked off the shelves supposed to contain them by the peculiar corkscrew motion of the ferry.

Worse, the crossing had taken longer than normal, not aided by the difficulty of getting into Calais harbour, and he was in some danger of missing his connection to the Paris-to-Prague Express. The steward in the first-class dining room had assured him that the driver would seek to make up time, so he would just have to hope – and it seemed a forlorn one – that he could get to Cheb before McKevitt.

‘And so, Fräulein Littleton, I hope you have everything you have come for,’ said Henlein, once more taking her hand to kiss it while Cal translated. ‘You will, of course, let me see what you intend to submit.’

‘Before you leave,’ added the Ice Maiden.

‘Plenty of time,’ Cal responded, his remark no longer met with warmth.

‘Wessely told me he had invited you to our local rally tonight,’ Henlein said. ‘I too will be attending. It is good that we come together to hear the German Führer speak, for I am certain he will refer to us and our difficulties and what aid he intends to give us.’

That was said with such confidence that Cal wondered if Henlein knew what Hitler was going to say – not the words, for he was very much an instinctive orator, but the gist. It was not a thought he held long, for the time had come for him and Corrie to depart, and as soon as they were out of the door she could not resist a jibe.

‘How does it feel to be frozen in ice like a woolly mammoth?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he replied, but he did.

‘How long have we got before we are taken to the bullring?’

‘A couple of hours.’

‘We could …’ she said kittenishly, taking his arm.

‘Haven’t you got typing to do?’

If it sounded like resistance it was only a formality.

Her nails dug into his arm. ‘I’ve got nimble fingers.’

‘My place or yours?’

Jimmy Garvin was bored stiff; he had actually called the Bayerischer Hof to inform Bartlett there was nothing happening, only to be told there was bugger all happening anywhere, certainly not in Prague, and what about him, surrounded by fanatical Nazis who kept trying to knock his eye out with their damn salute? It seemed churlish for Jimmy to point out that he was in much the same boat.

‘She must have interviewed Henlein, Jimmy, if she is staying in the same bloody hotel. What about breaking into her room and seeing if there’s anything worth pinching?’

‘You’re not serious, Vernon?’

‘No, joking really, but you never know what a young and ambitious fellow will do to get on, what?’

‘Meaning if I’d said I would do it you would not have restrained me?’

‘Laddie, I’m a hundred or more miles away, how could I? Best thing to do is to make yourself known to Corrie—’

‘I’ve met her, remember.’

‘Don’t be obtuse, Jimmy, there’s a good chap. Let her know you’re in Cheb, chat her up and use that devastating charm of yours to wheedle something out of her.’

Jimmy was about to say ‘What devastating charm?’ when he realised Bartlett was being sarcastic. ‘She’ll probably tell me to bugger off.’

‘Not a word our American chums employ, dear boy, but nothing ventured. Now, I’ve got to dash, the car is waiting to take me and
dump me amongst several thousand sweaty oiks in that damned Congress Hall so that I can listen to Hitler tell the world what a genius he is for the umpteenth time.’

‘Are you not worried about being overheard?’

‘Jimmy, I hope the Gestapo are listening in. The truth, for once, will do them a power of good.’

Lying soaking an hour later, Cal was not thinking about the second bout of lovemaking he had just been enjoying with Corrie Littleton, pleasant as that was, but about what might be asked of him when he met Veseli in an hour’s time – and he knew it was not just going to be beer, food and listening to Hitler; that box in the back of his car was there for a purpose and it did not take a genius to work it out.

He was going to be asked to blow Henlein’s safe, which was pushing things a bit; while he knew about explosives, there was a skill to being aware of the right quantity needed to blast open a lock of a hardened steel door without killing yourself in the process and this was no trial-and-error situation.

Also, it must have been planned from the outset; Moravec, he suspected, had suckered him into this, playing up his need for subterfuge in his own capital city, ramping up the nerves, dangling before him the enticing prospect of material that would answer his purpose without the risk of going into Germany.

How convenient it must have been, his turning up, a man with the skills needed, an expert in covert warfare, guns and explosives, abilities they had talked about months before. How long after he got Janek to initiate contact had Moravec seen that he might be the solution to a problem he was wrestling with?

Cal had to assume it had been from the outset and he had been
manoeuvred, pulled and pushed like some puppet, with Corrie Littleton the icing on the Moravec cake, which, if nothing else, showed that the intelligence chief was not only very quick to see a possibility but capable of acting on it with equal speed.

The other fact, which was inescapable, lay in the certain knowledge that someone else had been set to undertake what he was going to be asked to do and stood down when he arrived as a better alternative.

The reason? He was a foreigner, the original person tasked to blow Henlein’s safe and steal those documents had to be Czech, so was that sanction from the president to do nothing real or just another bit of flummery to suck him in?

Odds-on it was Veseli, but by using Cal, Moravec might get what he wanted, avoid censure if there was to be any and leave his best agent in place, which might not have been possible if Veseli did the deed.

How, if it was Veseli doing the job, had the Czech agent planned to get away? That, as Cal examined it, did not make sense. Once his cover was blown he was stuck miles from safety with everyone who had once trusted him baying for his blood, and he was not an easy man to disguise; even amongst Aryans he stood head and shoulders above them.

Imagining some of his Brownshirt thugs catching up with him and thinking of the treatment they would mete out should not have induced feelings of gratification, but it did; it was only a flight of the imagination and if Moravec had finagled him into this, Veseli must have known and been complicit.

The church clock striking six had him rise from the water; it was time to get ready.